Preparing to Depart (In Pursuit of the Star)

The adventure is starting up over on Reddit and players are asking some good questions.  Let's see if we can answer those and get prepared for their actual landing in Bitterwood Bay.

In this post I'll be explaining how I'm rolling dice and coming with ideas behind the scenes.  (See previous posts in this series.)

Spoilers ahead!

 

Barque at Sea by George Shaw

Areas they're talking about:

• the danger of storms at sea during this early season
• living off the land vs. bringing provisions for the journey
• goods to trade for sapphire flint
• information about Bitterwood Bay and its inhabitants
• how the military expedition might respond to theirs
  

Colony of origin

Some of these questions might be answered if we knew more about the specific colony that's sending the party out.  Let's roll some dice and see if the results spark any ideas.

• The colony's industries: vegetables (don't care), incense or coffee (could be good for trade), and a specialty.

Picking from the specialties at random, this city makes books and guns.  I think we can assume that incense and coffee would both be good for trade.  Guns would be excellent, but trading them with the locals has been outlawed by the viceroy (tension!).  Books might not go as far.

• There are no tree goblins in this area; the colony killed them all.
• The colony has forced the local giants to be enslaved, pay tribute, or be educated.  But, they also think of the giants here as a reliable ally.  (That probably means the giants are subjects of the city, educated in the imperial religion.)
• They're afraid of the local humans, thinking them most likely to cause the next war.

This means the expedition can be comprised of colonials and giants, but probably not any humans or goblins.

Initial map

The Society should have something of a map for the party, even if it's not much.  It should have Bitterwood Bay on it, the Mosquito Coast, and probably whatever's further south than the Bay.  It would also be good if there's some imperial settlement somewhere on this map, even if it's some remote station, just so there's a destination of last resort (like Shackleton going to South Georgia) that the party could head for if all else is lost.

Rolling up a quick country south of the Bay:

• High north/south mountain range.  (This continues the ones west of Bitterwood Bay.)
• Plains.
• Sea to the southeast of a long sandy spit.
• Colonial fort, some abandoned settlements.  (This might be a trading post, a good destination of last resort for the expedition.)
• Lots of goblins.
• Human trading town.
• Source of some kind of medicine.  Impoverished.  Invasive vines, same as in Sharptooth Country to the northwest.

Let's call this the Dry Cape.  Pulling out my list of settlement names, this little trading post is at White Isle.  I'm imagining Dry Cape as a long spit of land that breaks up into little islands at the end.  This might be the southernmost point of the continent.

Back at Bitterwood Bay, we have several features that need to go on a map:

• The wide mouth of the Blind River.  Further in, the river is narrower, then you get up to a place where it cascades down from the mountains.
• The barely-surviving house of Dead Spear.  Giants from here collect shellfish from the coast and from the rivers.  (Note from future self: This house is a bit inland to avoid pirates.)
• Ruins of an ancient bridge near Dead Spear, on the ancient road network.
• The prophet and his followers live at the old house of Spider by Crow, but they call themselves the Doomsday Travelers.  This fortified position is at an ancient crossroads.

(By the way, if you find yourself inadvertently following stereotypes and assuming all the leaders of your world have the same gender or race or age as yourself, try rolling randomly for those kinds of characteristics, either for individuals or for cultures.  I've really enjoyed the results of doing so myself.)

• An ancient bridge over a ravine near the Travelers, still usable.  (Remember to put the symbol of the ancient kingdom here, the sun with a face and thirteen rays.)
• A swamp or marsh, beyond which is/was a group that Dead Spear pays/paid tribute to.
• A waterfall on the Blind River, above which is/was a group friendly to Dead Spear.
• A ruined giantish house, completely abandoned.  Let's say this was the one Dead Spear once paid tribute to, so they're on the far side of the swampy area.

Let's roll up some details for that ruined house as well.  This kind of thing tends to add a lot of diversity to the countryside.

• It was called Flying Hand, hunting animals at some narrow gap in the terrain, collecting nuts from trees.  There could be a narrow neck of land between two rivers here, I guess.
• Deep cenote full of water, treasure down there.  (Do swamps and cenotes occur in the same kind of area?  A quick search suggests they do.  Good enough for me.)
• Butte where a battle was once fought, long ago.
• Flying Hand is high on a pinnacle (on the butte, let's say), with a stone wall 5 ft high around it (1.5 m).  Mother-of-pearl inlay on the inner side of the wall.  There's no building in the middle, but a garden with fruit trees.  (Probably all overgrown now, but still might have fruit.  This might make a good refuge where the party could retreat to if attacked.)
  

Either at Flying Hand or down at the bottom of the cenote, we could have some interesting items to help you learn more about this land.  Another sapphire flint artifact would be great -- maybe Flying Hand is the place where the explorer got the first knife from.

Leading to the Okamani

We know that the Blind River doesn't actually flow down from Okamani country, so the party is going to feel pretty lost at some point.  Other than just wandering aimlessly, how could they find the Okamani?  What clues could I give them?

• Someone knows the name "Okamani" and where to find such people.
• Another artifact of a similar style to the knife, in a context that gives information about its origins.
• Clues in the journal of the explorer.

The explorer got the knife from some house of giants here in Bitterwood Bay, along with the information that it came from the Okamani Kingdom further up the Blind River.  Let's say his information was entirely accurate, except he had the wrong river.  If Flying Hand is at a place between two rivers, they could have the Blind River on one side and the correct river on the other side, or tributaries of those rivers.  Let's go with that -- the explorer obtained the knife from Flying Hand (probably stealing it) and just went up the wrong river.  This means Flying Hand has to be in the northern part of the country, towards the Mosquito Coast where the correct river is.

Then we could put the Blind River right in the middle of the country, flowing from west to east.  Dead Spear could be more to the south, along the bay.  The town of the Doomsday Travelers then could be somewhere in the middle/west of the country.  And we did roll up that Dead Spear once had friends above the waterfall, so let's say their friends were the house of Spider by Crow (now the house of the Travelers).

Let's also say that the Travelers have heard of the Okamani people and know that they're somewhere further north.  The Travelers themselves don't know that much about the land as they migrated from somewhere else, maybe from the Dry Cape or from the far northeastern end of the Mosquito Coast.

Mosquito Coast

We don't need a lot of information about the Mosquito Coast yet, but it might be good to at least know the name of the people who live there.  Rolling a few dice:

• They're humans, the Tiginsi people.
• People say the Tiginsi are keepers of secret wealth.  They're suspicious of outsiders.  Captives are ransomed back to their own people.
• They shave their heads except for a topknot, and they have animal tattoos.
• They're raiders along the coast, with dugout canoes that have sails for long voyages.

This means the Tiginsi probably raid all up and down the coast, so if they've been doing that a long time, Dead Spear is probably located a bit inland.  (I'll make a note above.)  These people sound interesting.

• Their enemy is a colonial trade company.  (I'll assume the company had a bad trade deal with these people, maybe attempted to build a trading post that has since been burned down.  This might make it harder to establish a new trade deal around here.)

On the human tribes subsistence table, raiding is associated with exotic trade goods (among other things) so the Tiginsi might have guns that they acquired from the trade company.  White Isle, down past Dry Cape, might be a trading post from that same company.

The goblin captive at the start probably speaks the language of the Tiginsi, since they're from the same country.  The Tiginsi and the Okamani are nearby human groups, so they could speak the same language as each other.

Map of Bitterwood Bay

Let's draw up a quick map of Bitterwood Bay.  We've got information about the country and about the things in it.  Before trying to make it look fancy, I'm going to just put some marks on paper so I can figure out where things go.

• Big bay with lots of inlets and coves, little isles.  Sea to the east.  North-south mountain range along the west.

• Blind River, wide mouth near the sea, waterfall upriver.  A few tributaries?

• Dead Spear, broken bridge nearby.  Spider by Crow / Doomsday Travelers, good bridge nearby.  Road connecting them.

• Swamp with cenote.  Flying Hand at a place where two waterways nearly meet (with a low rise of hills separating them, I suppose).

That's enough for now.  I'll make a fancier version later on with labels and such, but this sketch lets me see where everything is.

The whole map is probably about 80 miles across (130 km).  (For my own reference, that's the distance from Monterey to Pacifica here in California.)

Regarding that ancient road, I'm not quite sure where it goes, or if it goes anywhere else at all.  The old kingdom has been gone long enough that the road might be just completely missing in parts, buried or worn away by time.  The parts that remain might be damaged enough by the forest that they're not very useful either, except as a landmark.

---

Next I'm going to roll up an encounter table for Bitterwood Bay, but for tonight this is a good stopping point.